


Filing

by Dustbunnygirl



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-02
Updated: 2009-01-02
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8005699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She’ll always be there, even long past the day the corner’s made empty.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filing

**Author's Note:**

> **Title** : Filing  
>  **Author Name** : dustbunnygirl  
>  **Characters/Pairings** : Mac Taylor (CSI:NY) (slight Mac/Aiden overtones)  
>  **Rating** : PG, if that. No, I don’t know where the smut went.  
>  **Disclaimer** : I don’t even own the DVDs of CSI: NY. This is me, playing around without delusions of ownership or hope of profit.  
>  **Warnings** : Spoilers for a couple Season 2 episodes, not much more than that, though.  
>  **Word Count** : 746  
>  **Author's Notes** : For Wenchamok, from the [FanFic Prompt Meme](http://dustbunnygirl.livejournal.com/270181.html) \- "#4. Angsty Character."  
> 

There is a pile on the corner of his desk. Between the sharp drop over the edge and the off-center nameplate, a kingdom of manila folders and photocopied pages and hastily scribbled notes held together by re-bent paperclips and someone’s dwindling hope sits and waits. And Mac Taylor is its king.

He sits in his City-issue throne and takes visual measure of his subjects. They aren’t as plentiful as they used to be, and he may be the only king in the world to ever see that as a Good Thing. He hopes, as he sits there and contemplates the tidily kept pile, that one day he’ll see it gone completely. That one day, he’ll slide each of them into a file cabinet, a person’s life and death tucked away in bent manila and black tin, and never have to think about them again.

But he knows, even as he thinks it, that that day will never come.

She’ll always be there, even long past the day the corner’s made empty.

Even now, if he looks just so, if the light hits just right, he can see her there. The shape of her, the curve of her hip resting against his desk, threatening to topple the stack to the floor. The longer he stares, the more substantial she becomes, until the light catches in her dark hair as she turns her head and stares at him with annoyance tempered with pity.

“Should’ve put me away a long time ago, Mac.”

“I did.” He doesn’t question the existence of the voice or of the transparent body it comes from, as if he’s adapted to the concept of being haunted. As if she’s not the first ghost he’s carried.

She looks down at herself – feet and legs, hips and arms and hands and every bit else – and lifts one eyebrow until it arches over one disbelieving eye. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”

“Filed under ‘B’ for Burn. More than happy to go look for yourself.”

The apparition moves, shoving off the desk and coming to a stop in front of Mac’s desk, hands placed firmly, carefully, on the desktop as she leans forward. As she leans through his desk lamp. “Not what I meant,” she says. Her insubstantial nose is an inch away from his and he swears – swears – he can feel her breath on his cheek. “You did what you had to do.”

“For the lab.” She nods; he shakes his head. “What about what I should’ve done for you?”

She shrugs. “I did what I had to do. And we caught the monster in the end. Isn’t that our job? Isn’t that what we do?”

He sinks back into the chair. It doesn’t offer the comfort he wishes it did. “At what cost?”

She smiles. The annoyance remains, but the pity is gone. “If Justice was free, it wouldn’t have to be blind. And we wouldn’t have to work so hard.”

“I should’ve known how focused you were. Should’ve done something, helped somehow…”

“You weren’t the boss of me anymore.” She pulls back. He feels immediately cold at her loss. “I wasn’t your responsibility.”

He stands so quickly his chair is knocked back into the window behind him. It trembles but doesn’t break. The desk shakes too when he slams his hand against the surface. “Damn it, Aiden! You were a friend. You were…” All the air and fury leaves him in a rush. He sinks back into the chair like his knees are little more than over-cooked spaghetti. He still can’t say it. Not even to a ghost. Not even to himself.

One side of Aiden’s smile falls. “Do us both a favor. Put me away, Mac.” The apparition moves back to the corner, back to the pile of unsolved cases stacked neatly in their folders. “You’ve got other ghosts that need your attention more than me.”

When she’s gone, the world outside the glass walls of his office begins to move again. Lindsey and Danny bent over some piece of evidence, Sheldon at his desk. Stella walks past Mac’s door and slows her steps, pausing just before she would disappear around the next corner and asking with a tilt of her head if he’s all right. He jerks his in the direction she was heading, a silent “All clear” to shut off whatever warning bells might’ve been sounding in her head.

For now, he’d rather sit with the things he couldn’t file away.  



End file.
